Altitude Sickness

Who would have thought little old Small Heath would be 11 games unbeaten this season – especially after the EFL decided to do everything they could to derail our season. Well we are and we’re up to 9th in the league and only two points off the play-offs having won four games in a row. Shaun Harvey and the rest of the cowboys must be absolutely livid and I love it.

The first half an hour of the game against Sheffield Wednesday was one to forget, we were also lucky not to be two or three down. We were really lacking quality, but up stepped Connor Mahoney to show what he’s about with an absolute peach to open his Blues account for the season and take the game level going into half-time.

The second half is more of what we expected from this side and we began to take control of the game with Monk making tactical changes to outnumber the Owls in the middle of the park – with that came dominance from the Blues.

Lukas Jutkiewicz headed home Jota’s cross for his 8th of the season and his 7th in the last six home games. The English striker with the Polish name really is in red hot form. Shortly after Che Adams added to the scoring after grabbing a deserved goal and putting the game to bed.

We now sit 8th in the league and are the form team along with QPR in the Championship, a great time to start hit the ground running going into some key upcoming games.

I posted on twitter a comparison of this season to last after 15 games and the difference is truly remarkable – 12 points and 13 places. When you put that into perspective it shows what a fantastic job Garry Monk, Pep Clotet, James Beattie and have done at Blues, so far. Jutkiewicz has equalled the amount of goals the whole team managed in 15 games and we are so much more resolute in terms of defending. The fitness levels is also a massive factor in the up turn of form and results – that all comes down to Sean Rush the conditioning coach who has the players at peak right now.

We now go into a huge game against Derby County next weekend who are also flying high in the league, a game I’d really take a point from before kick off. If Blues do the unthinkable and get a win at Pride Park then we’d start getting nose bleeds and altitude sickness from being so high up in the table, but like Monk keeps reiterating “we’ll take it one game at a time”.